Figure 2. Multidimensional scaling plot (MDS) of the archaeal community based on TTGE profiling of archaeal 16S rRNA genes.

This plot corresponds to a two-dimensional visualization of the Jaccard distance matrix. The ellipses designate clusters exhibiting more than 55% similarity and delineate the upper layer (0–3 cm depth), the intermediate layer (4–20 cm depth) and the deeper layer (24–38 cm depth) of the sediment core 1.